Hi!

I'm back, I haven't posted in a few days unfortunately things have been a little busy at work, but I started on another post that should be out pretty soon with some more exciting stuff to discuss. Meanwhile, this news crossed my path and it felt like I should post about it given that my goal with this blog is to document the process of creating my LLC.

Disclaimer: This is not legal advice, you should consult a lawyer about the requirements for your business to file a BOI report. All information in this blog post was gathered from FinCEN, see there for any additional information. 

So I found out from a tweet today that there are new federal reporting requirements for small businesses and I wanted to make sure I posted about it because it was news to me and would've completely evaded my sight. Beneficial Ownership Information reports are now required for all non-exempt businesses operating in the US to mitigate financial crimes committed under the label of small business.

The instructions on who needs to report are a little confusing (at least they were for me at first) so I'm going to list them off here. From the FinCEN brochure on the BOI reporting requirements:

Your company may need to report information about its beneficial owners if it is:

1. a corporation, a limited liability company (LLC), or was otherwise created in the United States by filing a document with a secretary of state or any similar office under the law of a state or Indian tribe; or

1. a foreign company and was registered to do business in any U.S. state or Indian tribe by such a filing.

Now filing this seemed a little scary to me at first, but it's actually not so bad now that I've filled the form out. The main goal here is for the feds to be able to create an accountability trail for small businesses that may be committing fraud or acting as shell companies. 

Depending when your company is formed you have different reporting requirements which I'll list off below from the brochure:

FinCEN began accepting reports on January 1, 2024.

• If your company was created or registered prior to January 1, 2024, you will have until January 1, 2025 to report BOI.

• If your company is created or registered in 2024, you must report BOI within 90 calendar days after receiving actual or public notice that your company’s creation or registration is effective, whichever is earlier.

• If your company is created or registered on or after January 1, 2025, you must file BOI within 30 calendar days after receiving actual or public notice that its creation or registration is effective.

• Any updates or corrections to beneficial ownership information that you previously filed with FinCEN must be submitted within 30 days.

So for my company, I'm not actually required to file until 2025, because I created the LLC in December of last year, but letting something like this go by the wayside would stress me out immensely until I do it so I'd rather get it out of the way now. To access the form you can go to the FinCEN website and file directly from there, or download a PDF and reupload it with the filled-out information. 

The process of filing it was very simple for me, but my business is also super uncomplicated so I'd advise you to consult with a lawyer if you're unsure at all about what your business' requirements are. You can also check the FinCEN BOIR FAQ for more information about the filing process. 

When you're ready to file you can do it from this site. I needed my address, EIN, and my driver's license to make everything work, it was just a matter of giving them the information relating to the LLC and then the information relating to my identity as the owner. All in all the whole form took about 5 minutes to fill out including the time spent scanning in my driver's license from my phone, if you're reading this blog it's probably just as simple for you to file as it was for me, but still check with a lawyer if you're unsure about how you need to handle it.

I'm seeing a lot of discourse about whether or not the feds should be allowed to require a database of all small businesses in America, what do you think? What are your thoughts on the potential consequences of it? 

To be entirely honest, I was kind of surprised this wasn't already a thing that the IRS filled in with data from tax returns. It seems like it's a good thing on the face, but I'm not sure I trust how the data will be used. I'm not well-versed enough in running a business to know what the potential risks could be for small business owners. What do y'all think about it?

Anyway, I hope this helps, I know it's mostly just me collecting the information from the brochure and the site into one place, but I got really nervous when I found out this was a requirement and I'm hoping I can save someone else that stress.

Thanks for reading!

- Dylan

Okay, I want to write about this as frequently as possible to encourage myself to maintain momentum, so I'm gonna try and start outlining the steps of what I've been doing so far. 

The first thing I did in pursuit of creating the LLC was getting an email set up with an @dolithiel.com domain name, technically this was taken care of well in advance of the LLC's creation, but that's why it's the first thing I did, isn't it? 

The process was pretty simple assuming you have some basic DNS knowledge, as well as iCloud, and AWS accounts. For those of you without the requisite technical knowledge, Domain Name System (DNS) is a tool used globally to resolve domain names like blog.dolithiel.com to IP addresses that your computer can reach via the internet. You can think of DNS as akin to a phone book or your contacts app, you look up the name you desire and get a number that can be used to reach the desired person or service. In this case the MX records you establish on your DNS server allow for any user searching for an @yourdomain.com address to determine that iCloud is the correct place to forward emails to if they want to reach their desired contact.

To get an email set up for your company the way I currently have there are two (simplified) steps to follow.

1. Register a domain on R53 or another DNS registry, see here for instructions

2. Set up DNS records to forward to iCloud email servers, see here for instructions

After this setup I had an email with the @dolithiel.com domain that I wasn't really using for a few months, but eventually after some talking with people whose advice I take very seriously I decided to start an LLC to experiment with what it's like to have a company. 

Registering the LLC was a bit more complicated and I imagine it varies a bit state by state, it's also probably much more common knowledge, but I'd like to outline what I did for you anyways.

The process of manually filing the LLC formation with the state seemed like it would be fairly slow, and my dad had previously mentioned using Rocket Lawyer in the past. I compared the pricing there with a few other options and with the new user discount they give it was about $80 cheaper than the next option after the registered agent fee. I followed the process they presented to me for about 30 minutes and filled out some basic questions about the intended industry, my role, how many owners there would be, etc. Since I'm the only person involved with the LLC and there's only one role to be mentioned the questions were pretty easy to get through. I put down "Technology product development, services, and research" or something to that effect for the industry. I wanted to give myself wiggle room to play around with different ideas for what the company could be as outlined in my previous posts, and I figured that was the best way to give myself that space. 

Basic requirements for an LLC are that you have it registered with the state, have a person and industry for it, and have a non PO box address in the state where you're filing for it to be created. You can use a service called a "Registered Agent" for official mail forwarding and to have a non PO box address available in the state you want to file in. I used the registered agent service that Rocket Lawyer provides so that I wouldn't have to have my address as the official one for legal documents sent to the company. 

I paid $125 for the registered agent fee, $100 for the LLC filing with the state, and $50 for Rocket Lawyer's fee on top. Overall, $275 for the business creation and $13 for the domain name, these were really simple to accomplish and could easily be done in a single night if needed.

So that's where I was at as of late December, it took about 2 weeks for the business registration to complete and I received an email at my @dolithiel.com address to inform me that it was an official entity. I've been taking things slow for the last few months, I'm currently pretty busy with my real job, school, and a lot of side projects, but I've recently made a fair bit of progress on some activities with the LLC that I'll try and cover that here soon.

For anyone reading this, is there anything I'm doing wrong or anything you'd suggest I do differently? Please let me know below or at dylan.brothers@dolithiel.com with any comments.

Thanks for reading!

- Dylan

Hello again!

Looks like about a dozen people saw my last post possibly? I'm very happy to have you here with us. It's a bit late as I'm writing this, nearly 2 AM; I'm not sure if I'll post it tonight and follow up tomorrow or save the whole thing for the morning, but for now alllons-y. 

I wanted to give some background on why I'm doing this and what my eventual goals are for the company going forward, but first, I realized while I was at work yesterday that I never actually gave the name of the company - it's called Dolithiel LLC. The name is after my sister Rowan, when I was like 13 years old I found a list of common English names translated into Elvish and hers translated to that. 

So, why am I doing this? I think there are a few reasons:

One would be that I want to learn - I feel like the world of business is kind of arcane to me and there are a lot of ideas and terms I think I'm misunderstanding or not understanding and I'd like to rectify that. Alongside that I'm 26 now, and while I know on paper that isn't super old it feels like I'm letting time get away from me and I want to make the most of what I've got. I want to start trying to make something even if I'm not sure what it is yet, I think even if I don't have a world changing idea or service to provide the world right now it's worth trying just to learn a new skill and have fun. Lastly, I have a lot of silly ideas (hopefully some you'll see soon) I want to pursue that I think require a legal business entity to enable them so I formed it with the intention of enabling some creativity in myself that would not otherwise be available.

What are my goals for the business? 

I'm honestly not exactly sure yet, I think I mainly just want to experiment and learn at least for the time being. I have some ideas for products I want to create and services I might want to offer, but my plan isn't really to pursue financial independence through this company right now. I have a stable job at a good company, and I'm really happy with my role there, so I have no desire to abandon it in pursuit of a lot of instability and hardship.

All that said I think it's important that my company have a goal and I personally believe that goals should be unattainably large to drive one to pursue great things so the goal of Dolithiel LLC will be:

Complete and utter domination of the tech industry, the world, and all realms physical, spiritual or divine.

I think that should be sufficiently unattainable to give me some drive.

It's 2:45 now and I need to get up for work in a few hours so I think I'm probably gonna sleep now, thanks for reading!

- Dylan



Hello to anyone reading this!

This blog will serve a couple of purposes that I'll try and expand on more in the next couple days, but for now I wanted to get started off with a quick summary:

In December of last year I started an LLC not really with the goal of providing any particular product or service, but to learn how starting a business works better from a legal perspective and what the processes of getting things set up are like. I will be providing products and possibly services eventually I'm not sure what exactly they will be, but they will likely be strange. The goal of this blog is to help me document the knowledge I gain, to hopefully save others time in the future, and to help me learn how to write about work/business activities. I'm hoping to try on a bunch of hats before this is all at a conclusion and I'm looking forward to sharing what I learn with anyone reading this page.

If you have any feedback as I go on things I might be doing wrong please feel free to reach out to me here or at my company email: dylan.brothers@dolithiel.com I always try to be open to feedback.

Thanks for reading!

- Dylan